They are coming off a victorious week in successfully pushing their candidates — Ken Buck for U.S. Senate and Dan Maes for governor — through the primary election.

Yet they are mindful of a Democratic strategy underway to paint them as crazy people, obsessed with President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and certain the nation is veering toward socialism.

They know that the power and attention they had during the primary — when Republican candidates courted their energy and cash — will be more diffuse, even distant, as politicians court unaffiliated voters.

And they know that to win mid-term elections in a politically unpredictable state like Colorado, it will take boots on the ground, a moderate message touting fiscal conservatism and a lot of discipline.

“I don’t care what political affiliation you are right now, people want government to let them live their lives,” said Lesley Hollywood, director of the Northern Colorado Tea Party. “Those are mainstream ideals. There is nothing fringy about that.”

Democrats, though, are eager to show otherwise.

“Tea Party candidates like Ken Buck can run from their records as extremists, but they can’t hide,” said Deirdre Murphy, spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Statewide, Tea Party leaders have been holding regular conference calls and meetings to chart a fall strategy.

They say they are girding for attacks from the left — some anti-Tea Party groups are already fomenting — and attempting to get their message out to moderate voters.

Likely gone will be the Tea Party rallies of yore, where people dressed up in 1700s costumes and delivered speeches about rejecting the federal government and declaring Obama’s ties to socialism.

“One-on-one conversations”

Leaders say they don’t want to scare moderates off or distract from a message of fiscal responsibility.

“There is a kind of place for rallies, and that is not the whole objective,” said Jennifer Bailey, president of the Western Slope Conservative Alliance. “We’re trying to be inclusive and we’re trying to be educational-based.”

Lu Busse, chairwoman of the 9.12 Project Colorado Coalition, said the groups are transitioning to a quieter, more-focused ground game — targeting unaffiliated voters and even Democrats.

“Between now and Nov. 2 we won’t have time to have big rallies,” Busse said. “We’re effective in those one-on-one conversations, when we talk to people neighbor to neighbor . . . American to American.”

Most leaders say they won’t have hurt feelings if the Republicans, whom they helped get onto the general election ballot, don’t pay as much attention to them through Nov. 2.

“That’s not their job right now. We don’t expect it,” said Don Rodgers, a leader with the Pikes Peak Patriots in Colorado Springs. “Their job is to go win an election.”

Busse agreed.

“I would find it hard for any of us to flip a vote to Sen. Bennet just because Ken Buck wasn’t as conservative as we first thought,” she said. “He’d have to start talking like the Democrats for us to desert him.”

That probably won’t be Buck’s strategy and operatives on the left know that, which is why work is already underway to launch anti-Tea Party movements to try to tar all GOP candidates as too extreme for mainstream America.

Democratic National Committee leaders last month unveiled a mid-term election plan to connect Republican candidates with some of the more fringe beliefs espoused by Tea Party leaders, like privatizing Social Security.

Using guerrilla marketing, Youtube.com videos and punchy — if not profane — T-shirt slogans, groups like The Agenda Project hope to inspire a dialogue that challenges the Tea Partyers for being “irrational” and “reactionary.”

“It grabs the attention of people on the left . . . because they haven’t been able to find their voice,” said Erica Payne, founder of the New York-based Agenda Project, which has launched a Youtube video capitalizing on the rallies and an anti-Tea Party clothing line.

“I think it’s time to have a serious conversation. We want to build an intelligent political movement,” Payne said.

Contest for unaffiliated voters

On Friday, Democrat incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet’s campaign chided the media for not holding Buck accountable on an earlier statement in which he said Social Security was a “horrible, bad policy.”

Buck has clarified that he believes in keeping Social Security solvent for future generations and didn’t support Congress raiding funds to pay for other priorities.

With both sides of the political spectrum laboring on fall election strategy, one thing is clear: The 1.1 million unaffiliated voters statewide will get a lot of attention.

“I think voters are angry, or at the very least there is a great deal of angst among voters,” said Norman Provizer, a political scientist at Metropolitan State College of Denver. “You need a coordinated campaign. One prong needs to mobilize the base and another prong will be trying to mobilize unaffiliated voters.”

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that whistleblower protections passed by Congress in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 apply only when those alleging corporate misdeeds bring their information to the government.

A prominent white nationalist is suing Twitter for banning his accounts at a time when social networks are trying to crack down on hateful and abusive content without appearing to censor unpopular opinions.

The social media service Twitter is believed to have suspended thousands of accounts for being automated bots, or for other policy violations, drawing outcry from fringe conservative media figures who lost followers in the move.